1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to improving video and graphics quality.
2. Description of Related Art
A display device renders input data as a two-dimensional image in color or grayscale. The input data may be graphical in nature. An example of such a device is a PC display monitor. The input data may be a video signal. An example of such a device is a TV or video monitor. The input data may be a combination of graphics and embedded video. An example of such a device is a PC display monitor displaying graphics with one or applications displaying video in a window, or a PC/TV display device with two or more input ports displaying graphics or full-screen video or a combination of graphics and video, e.g. Picture-in-Picture.
A viewer typically manually controls the color and contrast of a display device. The issue with manual control is that it does not result in optimal display quality for all possible input data. For example, setting the contrast control to increase the contrast of a washed out image will result in over-contrasted images for a normal image. Decreasing the color saturation setting for a highly saturated image would be optimal, but if the input changes to a de-saturated image, this setting would now be sub-optimal. It is not feasible or convenient for a viewer to continuously change display settings to adapt to the nature of the input image, particularly when the input is a video sequence.
Another problem with manual control of contrast and color is that it is not sensitive to the nature of the input data. Manual contrast control applies a multiplicative factor to the input luma component. Due to the finite dynamic range of luma values, increasing the contrast of a dark image in order to be able to see the shadow details results in loss of information in the bright highlights. The multiplicative nature of this control also implies that there is no possibility of increasing the contrast of a predominantly bright image.
In order to apply image improvement effects to graphics or video images it is necessary to know the nature of the image content. In order to correctly display graphics or video material on a flat panel display, various qualities of the material have to be measured. Implementing digital electronics for each of these measurements can be wasteful.
For example, FIG. 1a shows representative medium-bright image and a single pixel based histogram for the image. FIG. 1b shows an example dark (low-brightness) image and a single pixel based histogram for the image. In the shown histograms, the horizontal axis represents luminance values and the vertical axis represents the number of individual pixels having a given luminance value. For example, for the dark scene in FIG. 1b, the luminance histogram indicates that most of the pixels have low luminance, while for the medium-bright scene in FIG. 1a the luminance spectrum is wider, indicating a larger number of brighter pixels. Furthermore, a histogram for a dark image is shown in FIG. 2a and a transfer curve for enhancing the contrast in such an image is shown in FIG. 2b. The histogram indicates that most of the pixels are in the low-luminance range. The transfer function increases luminance in the high-luminance regions of the image without substantially changing the luminance in the mid- and low-luminance regions of the image.
Unfortunately, however, since the transfer functions are based upon histograms that are derived from the luminance values of individual pixels, small variations in pixel luminance values (which would not in all likelihood be noticed by a viewer) can have a disproportionate impact on the transfer function and the resulting image.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method to address the above-identified problems. The present invention addresses such a need.